Too Stubborn to Die

Grill Master [ Elite ] Who likes Indoor kitchens anyway? They are such a bore. Go outside, grab a beer, and work the grill! Passively improves the quality of dishes cooked by the user outdoors. Note: any form of roof will hinder this Skill useless.

Spirit Meat Handler [ Elite ] Wrangling fresh meat can be a dangerous job, even more so when you’re dealing with ghost meat. Passively provides minor increases in aether absorption when cooking with meat and aether.

Skill Upgrade [ Questionable Recipes ] = Spirit Recipes [ Epic ] Your cooking goes a step beyond questionable, and dips into the realm of spirits. Passively expands the concept of questionable recipes to include spirit-touched food, making it easier to create new recipes.

Mass Produced Cooking! [ Epic ] Cooking for friends and family is so yesterday. The glimmer of coin reflects in your glassy eyes, and the promise of wealth lies beyond. Passively, this Skill ensures perfect reproduction of food goods, reducing waste and increasing serving output relative to ingredient use.

Delicate Touch [ Epic ] It isn’t just cooking for you. It’s expression, it’s art, it’s a way of life. When activated, this Skill allows the user a finer touch when cooking, resulting in not just more precise outcomes for the dishes they cook, but also creating stunningly beautiful meals that can impress even kings.

Sooty was already nodding over the options. “Aye, bossman, Skills are Skills, but these? Hmm, it’s kind of a mid selection, to be honest. Nothing really stands out, but nothing is particularly bad either.”

Aaron nodded. He wasn’t quite disappointed, but didn’t entirely disagree either. He probably could have been a little more purposeful as he ground out his levels. But it was what it was, and he didn’t hate the options available to him; they were just a little underwhelming.

Then again, I probably have to get used to not unlocking Legendary Skills every time.

“Maybe just go with Mass Produced Cooking,” Sooty said. “The others aren’t bad, but it’s probably the best option you have.”

“Yeah. To be honest, I was thinking the same,” Aaron replied.

There were multiple Skills that were half decent, but just didn’t quite cut it. For example, the Skill Upgrade for Questionable Recipes wasn’t half bad and was clearly an improvement on what he had. But Aaron didn’t really need a lot of help discovering recipes anyway. And the first two Skills were decent again, but also conditional. Skills with conditions were fine, but he was going to be limited in how he used a Skill; he wanted the payoff to be worthwhile, and both skills just sounded kind of average.

On the other hand, Yendal would have no doubt liked him to pick Delicate Touch, but at the end of the day, he was still an ogre cook first and foremost. He wasn’t against picking up tips from Yendal and using them to balance his Profession. But he wasn’t going to steer too far in that direction unless it made sense. And Delicate Touch wasn’t quite there.

“Alright, Mass Produced Cooking it is.”

No additional Profession [ Passive ] Skill slots available.

Discard [ Passive ] Profession Skill: Y/N?

Aaron accepted the prompt and discarded [ Questionable Recipes ]. It was a Common Skill gained a long time ago, and had used almost since taking the Profession, and as such, was happy to see it go.

The moment he was done with his Skill selection, he went and placed all 32 free points into Fortitude. With any luck, he might be able to survive some of Mo’han’s attacks by the time they finally fought.

“Ye getting strong, bossman.”

“I’m not half bad, I suppose,” he shrugged and opened his status page.

[ Name: Aaron Dober ]

[ Age: 23 ]

[ Race: Human [ Awoken ] ]

[ Grade: E ]

[ HP: 54700 ]

[ MP: 23300 ]

[ SP: 66700 ]

[ AP: 3000 ]

[ Class: Empty-Handed Energy Monk, lvl 38 ]

[ Profession: Ogre Gastronomist, lvl 46 ]

[ Stats ]

[ Strength: 350 (+147) ]

[ Vitality: 547 (+276) ]

[ Fortitude: 667 (+336) ]

[ Dexterity: 254 (+119) ]

[ Agility: 409 (+183) ]

[ Intelligence: 295 (+124) ]

[ Willpower: 233 (+119) ]

[ Charisma: 192 (+117) ]

[ Perception: 377 (+162) ]

[ Titles: Shadow Trials Trailblazer, Stamina Control Prodigy, Mana Control Prodigy, Vitality Control Prodigy,Holder of a True Blessing, In the Eyes of the Gods, Aether Wielder, World Overlord, Endurer ]

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[ Traits: Fate Weaver (Alpha), Major Blessing of Oozagh the Rotund, True Blessing of Yendal the Empty-Handed, Herald of a God, Death Cheat ]

[ Racial Skills: Inspect, Lingua Multiversa ]

[ Profession Passive Skills (3/3): Mass Produced Cooking!, Conductive Gut, Adipose Fusion ]

[ Profession Active Skills (6/6): Spirit Toes, Oozagh’s Breath, Foul Ichor, Unsightly Degustation, Perfect Measurements, Spirit Hands ]

[ Class Passive Skills (3/3): Reverse Cycle Faux Core, Equal and Opposite, Blurred Image ]

[ Class Active Skills (6/6): Soul Shattering Strike, Relentless Scourge, Gorgon’s Time Dilation, Turbocharged Haymaker, Gust Step, Spectral Fist ]

He still felt like he had a lot of work to do, but he was getting pretty tanky, he had to admit, even before accounting for his ability to resurrect.

I have a feeling people are going to have a hard time killing me.

With that thought, Aaron grinned and turned to leave. It was time to jump into a trial.

But before he left, he waved goodbye to Clem and thanked her again. Not that it was necessary. She was clearly getting enough out of their relationship for it to be well and truly worth her while.

Entering the hallway, the crowds were bigger than ever. But it wasn’t just crowds. Stalls had begun to line the hallway, with people trying to sell all manner of goods to people as they shuffled forward into the trials.

There was a surprising number of Profession-focused people in the trials, and it seemed to be worse now than ever. Probably due to the additional challenges provided by the Tutorials, allowing Profession-heavy builds to enter the trials without beating their Tutorial bosses.

Not only that, but he noticed that many stood around in groups, like they were organizing amongst themselves. There was talking and trading, but Aaron was fairly certain it went beyond that.

Pentival’s people even had somewhat of a section of the hallway carved out for themselves, and received regular guests.

Aaron could only imagine what kinds of agreements and alliances were being drafted throughout the hallway. These were the most powerful people of the sector, and what he saw now was no doubt the foundations of what alliances might rule the sector in the future, or fight for their right to.

But in truth, it all seemed so tiresome to him. But he wasn’t the only one who wanted to avoid politics. There were a good number of trial takers who were focused almost entirely on beating trials, ignoring what was going on around them.

For example, he barely ever saw Darius. And when he did, it was almost exclusively near the dial. And coincidentally, he spotted him just as he lined up. Just in time to see him jumping back into another trial.

Somewhat troublesomely, he had also noticed that the thal’kesh were similarly minded. They barely spent any time in the hallway or rooms, jumping in and out of trials.

At least neither Darius nor the thal’kesh seemed likely to have grand alliances, but they were unlikely to be weak pushovers either, if they were grinding trials as much as they were.

However, the weaker thal’kesh had dropped off, and he had spotted them taking to grinding their Professions. No amount of drive and persistence could overcome the difficulty of dying for most. Even with soul recovery items, there was only one person who seemed entirely unbothered by dying.

Returning from his wandering thoughts, he realized the person standing before him was quite small and oddly familiar. They wore a pointy wizard’s hat that rose about six feet. However, the person beneath the hat probably wasn’t even five feet tall.

“Hey, do I know you?” Aaron said, tapping the small figure on the shoulder.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, turning to frown at Aaron. “What do you want?”

“You’re from Earth, aren’t you?” he pointed at her as he traced back through his thoughts.

“Yes. How astute of you. It’s Emmy Sharp,” she sighed. “How can I help?”

“Help? I was just saying hi…”

“Oh, I see. Well, hi,” she said, and turned back around.

I guess she doesn’t want to be friends. Oh well.

Aaron wasn’t too bothered either way. He just felt weird ignoring others from Earth. The sensible part of him, even though he often ignored it, told him to spread his wings and at least try to be social.

But it seemed silence was in order, and a long, kind of awkward moment went by as they shuffled toward the dial.

The line was actually very fast, but there were just so many people now that it still took a few minutes to reach the dial.

“Umm,” Emmy murmured, breaking the silence. It sounded kind of forced, as if she didn’t want to talk, but felt it necessary.

“Yes?” Aaron raised a brow.

So, she wants to talk now?

“I have just one question.”

“Shoot. Whatever you want.”

“The Trial of the Challenger. You’ve completed them, haven’t you?”

“All of them? No way. I’m hoping to, though. We’ll see, though.”

“You have a blessing, though, don’t you?”

Aaron inched closer and whispered. “Yeah, why?”

“Look, don’t get the wrong idea. I don’t need help,” she huffed and crossed her arms. “I just want to know how many attempts it took you to get a blessing. That’s it. I’ve been trying to get this genie to notice me, but he’s one stubborn bastard, and it’s starting to get on my nerves.”

“Oh… well, have you tried beating him?”

“What do you think? Of course I have. A couple of times. That’s what’s so infuriating about it. I beat him, and he still won’t bless me. Not only that, but it’s actually starting to get kind of hard.”

“I mean, why would he bless you if he hasn’t challenged you yet?” Aaron hummed. “Makes sense to me. Probably just wants to see how far you can push yourself. If you can beat the low levels easily, he probably wants to see you at a higher level, one where he can really push you. Hell, I can’t even beat my patron goddess. She let me have a blessing just because I managed to hit her.”

“Really?” Emmy’s eyes lit up knowingly. “I see.”

“Oh, look, we’re at the front of the line,” Aaron pointed ahead.

“Thanks a lot, Aaron,” she smiled and ran up and slapped the dial. “See ya around!”

She seems nice.

Following Emmy’s steps, Aaron started his own trial, and of course, he picked Trial of Dominance alongside Oozagh.

In less than a second, he found himself standing atop a throne of skulls atop a huge mountain on a hellish landscape.

“Oookay. This is something.”

Oozagh looked across at him and nodded. “Nice gauntlets you have, little man. I see you’ve taken my words to heart. I’m sure you’ll impress many ogre ladies with such fine accessories like those.”

“Wait, that’s not–”

“Focus on the trial! We talk after, little man! Bahaha!”

Aaron’s brow twitched. He wanted to set the record straight, but Oozagh wasn’t wrong. Little red eyeballs had lit up across the landscape, and he had a feeling they were looking at him.

As they stepped forward, he spotted hundreds, maybe even thousands of mutated humanoids bound by chains. They snarled and huffed as they looked up at him, clearly more than a little agitated.

“I have a feeling they don’t like me.”

“Thaaat’s right! You’ve found him, enslaved mutants! The seemingly nonchalant man at the top of the mountain is your enslaver and torturer! The destroyer of your worlds! The man who stole your mommy and made her his own! And maybe your daddy, too. But don’t quote me on that!” Blasted a voice that sounded like it was coming from a megaphone across the land.

“HEY! What the hell? Are you talking about me? None of that is true!” Aaron insisted as all the red eyes glared at him.

“Are you going to let him get away with it? Or are you going to make him suffer? The portals of hell where the tortured lay have been opened, and you have but one target to claim your vengeance against!”

As the voice spoke, red flaming portals opened up across the land below, and hundreds more of the disfigured and disgruntled mutants walked out.

“As for you, little man. All you have to do is hold this hill against the waves of hell tortured until the bell sounds! Be careful, though! They really, really hate you! Oh, and for the record, your face has been imprinted in the minds of all who are enslaved on Hellfire world #330037. Like for real. Not just in the trial. These guys are not going to be forgetting about you anytime soon. Good luck, trial taker!”

“Wait, like forever?”